Page 167 of These Summer Storms

A little shrug. “Claudia and I will stay for dinner and then…” She pointed across the Bay. “We’re right there.”

“You know you don’t have to—”

“I know.” Emily nodded. “But I live in hope that she’ll—”

Alice reached for her. “That’s why we love you.” She hugged her sister and turned to her brother. “And you?”

He looked at his own watch. “I figured I’d use the helicopter one last time, before they start sending me a bill. It will be here in a few.” He pointed in the direction of the helipad. “Do you want a ride?”

“No.” She shook her head, pointing in the opposite direction, to the skiff that had been delivered from across the Bay earlier in the day. “We’re taking the train.”

He lifted his chin toward the boathouse. “He’s waiting for you.”

She followed Sam’s gaze to find Jack in the distance, leaning against the weathered shingles with his bags at his feet, sleeves rolled up to show that sextant tattoo she now knew intimately.

Another impossible change the week had brought.

Jack noticed her watching and came off the wall, reaching down to collect his bags before he started toward them, slowly, as though he knew they needed more time.

They did. Time like this, without specters or secrets. Without the gothic manor house doing what gothic manor houses did. Dredging up the past. Haunting them.

Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, looking suddenly, strangely like a dad. “Text when you get home. So we know you got there safely.”

She smiled at the words, the way he tried them on. “Let me know how it goes with the kids?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound sure it would go well. And truthfully, he’d deserve it. Of all of them, Sam had the most work ahead.

Emily lifted her phone. “We’ll start a group thread. When we’re off the island.”

It felt important not to wait. To do it while they were there, on the island, the place that had brought them all together. That had raised them. That had seen them broken and, in the last week, had blown away the pieces. Left them with space to rebuild. If they wanted it.

Alice pulled her phone out of her pocket, smooth black obsidian and sapphire glass, that gleaming silverSon the back. The hurricane. She ran her thumb over it, tracing the letter, letting herself think about her father for a moment. How he had changed the world, big and small. How he had changed them. Before. And After.

She opened a new text.

“Emily,” she said, adding the names to the address box. “Sam. Greta.” Opening the settings, she renamed the group.

Storms Inside.

And then, in the text box, she wrote the first thing that came. A fresh start.

This is your sister.